front cover of Dynamism
Dynamism
The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction, and Economic Growth
Edmund Phelps, Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon, and Gylfi Zoega
Harvard University Press, 2020

Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps and an international group of economists argue that economic health depends on the widespread presence of certain values, in particular individualism and self-expression.

Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps has long argued that the high level of innovation in the lead nations of the West was never a result of scientific discoveries plus entrepreneurship, as Schumpeter thought. Rather, modern values—particularly the individualism, vitalism, and self-expression prevailing among the people—fueled the dynamism needed for widespread, indigenous innovation. Yet finding links between nations’ values and their dynamism was a daunting task. Now, in Dynamism, Phelps and a trio of coauthors take it on.

Phelps, Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon, and Gylfi Zoega find evidence that differences in nations’ values matter—and quite a lot. It is no accident that the most innovative countries in the West were rich in values fueling dynamism. Nor is it an accident that economic dynamism in the United States, Britain, and France has suffered as state-centered and communitarian values have moved to the fore.

The authors lay out their argument in three parts. In the first two, they extract from productivity data time series on indigenous innovation, then test the thesis on the link between values and innovation to find which values are positively and which are negatively linked. In the third part, they consider the effects of robots on innovation and wages, arguing that, even though many workers may be replaced rather than helped by robots, the long-term effects may be better than we have feared. Itself a significant display of creativity and innovation, Dynamism will stand as a key statement of the cultural preconditions for a healthy society and rewarding work.

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front cover of Tropical Forest Diversity and Dynamism
Tropical Forest Diversity and Dynamism
Findings from a Large-Scale Plot Network
Edited by Elizabeth Losos and Egbert Giles Leigh Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2004
Long-term Forest Dynamics Plots (FDPs) allow ecologists to explain patterns in diversity and dynamics in tropical forests around the world. In this collection, Elizabeth Losos and Egbert Giles Leigh Jr. assemble extensive standardized data—collected here in one location for the first time—from sixteen tropical FDPs and synthesize the findings, putting these unique and valuable plots in a global context by highlighting the utility of the collected data for conservation and forest management.

Written by experts in the field of tropical ecology, Tropical Forest Diversity and Dynamism will appeal to students and professionals with an interest in community ecology and patterns of diversity.
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front cover of Vitality And Dynamism
Vitality And Dynamism
Interstitial Dialogues of Language, Politics, and Religion in Morocco's Literary Tradition
Kirstin Bratt
Amsterdam University Press
Anti-colonial literature is not necessarily ‘combat literature’ as Fanon and Déjeux have both suggested in their own writings. While it is often combative, there is also anti-colonial literature that emphasizes the human and the humane rather than the oppositional and contentious; it cannot be fair to label all anti-colonial literature as combative, even if one were to expand the definition of “combat” to include peaceful struggles against oppression or dehumanization. This book suggests that the relationship between the West and the rest of the world has been imagined as a relationship of Self (the West) to Other (the rest of the world), ordered and bordered geographically by the whims of Europeans and creating a Center-Periphery paradigm. These invented boundaries of humanity serve to separate geographical sites, but more, they serve to enclose the Empire and exoticize other cultures. Boundaries are often spatial, but more often, they are related to relationships and colonialization.
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